where the road ends
by my tears are becoming a sea
Summary: they're both nomads, but even wanderers need a place to call home. —marley/buck


She makes her pilgrimage to the tiny shrine off the coast each spring and summer, and he's started going with her the last two or three years. Not out of fear for her safety, because hell, she's got a giant fire-breathing dog that would tear apart anyone even mildly suspected of doing her harm, but because of the companionship. He'll admit that it feels less lonely traveling with another drifter - the fact is, they're both nomads, but even wanderers need a place to call home.

.

"It seems that you've missed your footing," she remarks dryly, peering down at him from atop a rock flat-surfaced rock, body packed in a faintly possessive stance that makes him think of those 'king of the mountain' games he and Flint used to play when they were kids. He retorts with a scathing "Oh, you _think_?" to which Marley responds by tapping her feet impatiently and sending Prometheus, her Arcanine, down the ledge to retrieve his sorry ass from a mound of dirt and dust plus, he thinks, some disgusting Spinarak cobwebs that haven't seen the light of day for aeons, at least. The big animal's fur feels hot as a sweltering day in the Battle Zone, right underneath the dreary shade of Stark Mountain, and he's sweating by the time they reach the top. His companion looks him over, barely showing an ounce of distaste as she hands him a water bottle and a wet rag soaked with some of the runoff from the spring they found earlier.

"Here. Drink up," she tells him, continuing ahead while he pants. "We'll miss the solstice and the transformation if you keep dragging us behind. We're already twenty minutes and," she checks her watch, "thirty-nine seconds off schedule. Come on when you're finished."

Her boots crunch the gravel as she walks on ahead, and he's not more then ten paces behind her when he suddenly whoops and breaks out into cheers, spotting the exit. Marley says nothing, but she brushes her hair back and hides the tiniest of smiles.

.

They have canapes and hors d'oeuvres underneath a jackapple tree. watching the sunset and the flocks of migratory Shaymin padding quickly across the sky and bringing Gracidea pollen with them, ready to bring life to a new patch of barren earth.

"D'you miss them?" he asks, when it's dusk and the stars, muted, twinkle half-brightly through the cover of the clouds. "You come here every year to watch them come and go, Mar. Sure you've never thought about capturing one and bringing it with you?"

Marley shakes her head, lost in thought. "No. Caring for one of them, if they happen to stumble on their way here, but nothing more than that. These Shaymin, they're pure. I wouldn't ever catch one just to put it in a Pokeball and have it on display. That's just a shitty thing to do." She tosses back a cowlick and plucks a blade of grass, rubbing it pensively between her fingertips. "So, yes, it's mildly discomforting to view something so ephemeral, but oddly fulfilling at the same time."

"Like a spiritual retreat?" he inquires. "Heard that Cynthia likes to visit the Sinjoh ruins during the winters to connect with the temporal and spatial frequencies there, to enhance her universal harmony and better act as a receiver to the metaphysical resonances of the One Creator, or somethin' like that, anyhow. I only hear what my bro tells me." He grins a little sheepishly, and Marley snorts.

"Say, Mar," he starts. "You grateful for anything?"

"Of course I am," she deadpans. "It's a lovely spectacle, is it not?" She gestures at the trails of petals left behind, the pollen dancing crisply across the wind, skirting on the waters, ocean blooms stretching their fragile, dew-drenched arms towards the moon. "I don't come up here for the food, anyway. There's a certain beauty to be found in the Gracidea bearing." She shrugs. "Lucas went with me once, and that foreign professor showed up. I can remember it being the first time I ever saw a Shaymin in person. Until then, I'd only heard about their species in old mythology texts."

"It's pretty great," he agrees.

"How very moving of you to say," Marley says, flat. Despite himself, he chuckles at the comment, and Marley looks at him, blank as ever until she curls up and drifts to sleep against the tree trunk. When he curls up next to her, she doesn't protest, letting out only a tiny yawn-sigh of air. He pulls out their picnic blanket and shakes it free of crumbs, then drapes it over the two of them and he falls asleep on an August night listening to the chatter of the Illumise and Volbeat, smelling the rich tang of the soil, arms wound protectively around a wisp of a girl.

.

Come the morning, they've gone back into the thick of the mountain. Marley folds her arms and frowns, her Arcanine padding softly behind her and giving him shifty looks. It's September, and for Buck, life has never been grander than this: Marley and the flowers, the sky, the sea.


End file.
